Joseph Losey

Joseph Losey was born in La Crosse, Wisconsin, USA on January 14, 1909, into a puritanical family that marked him. He was married three times and had two children. His arrival at the cinema would go a long way, since in his youth he began studying medicine, which he made compatible with directing a theater group. Literature was like a magnet for him, and he even worked as a critic, but above all with respect to the representation of works on stage; and there he contributed to the formation of him a stay in Germany and then later another in England, where he was under the tutelage of Charles Laughton. Precisely he would direct him on stage in 1946 in “Galileo Galilei”, the work of Bertol Brecht. But before this he launched a successful career in theater management in the 1930s, in New York and Boston. He made a big impact with “The Living Newspaper”, which used film projections on stage to present an original living newspaper; More than a hundred people participated in this avant-garde work. Around this time he traveled to the Soviet Union, an innocent learning and professional trip that would surely provide one more excuse for the shameful Committee on Un-American Activities to blacklist him years later.

With the path of cinema open as a resource on stage, in 1938 he took another step by filming 60 educational documentaries for the Rockefeller Foundation. It was a team effort that helped him prepare scripts and learn the task of editing. The following year, for the New York World’s Fair, she was behind a puppet movie.

His work for NBC on the radio in 1942, with half-hour programs with actors such as Paul Muni and Peter Lorre , further introduced him into the orbit of the cinematographer, and in 1943 producer Louis B. Mayer offered him a contract. He is the mighty calling of Hollywood, but the war delays his move there as he is called up. When he returns he shoots a short educational documentary, A Gun in His Hand , which gets an Oscar nomination.

His debut in fiction comes with The Boy with Green Hair (1948), a sensitive and poetic film about the rejection suffered by a child because of the color of his hair, a plea that defends the individual against uniformization, where He deals with topics that are dear to him, such as the defenselessness of the most vulnerable, such as children, and loneliness. In M (1951) , he dares to undertake a remake of the Fritz Lang film about the Düsseldorf serial killer that he approaches with a different, non-expressionist aesthetic. Losey is far from the star-system, but nevertheless agrees to shoot with Paul Muni a co-production with Italy, Stranger on the Prowl(1952), which will give him many headaches due to delays in filming and because just then he is summoned to declare the Committee on Un-American Activities. By not appearing he becomes a victim of the witch hunt, his name joins the black lists along with that of his screenwriter Ben Barzmann. His name will fall from the credit titles, which will last several years and affects titles such as The Sleeping Tiger (1954), and he is forced to go into exile choosing London as his place of residence, the city that will see him die in 1984.

He has some food jobs to do, but Losey manages to get his career back on track. Cerebral and analytical, his knowledge of the scenic space acquired in the theater, plus an acute desire to trap human psychology in singular relationships of dominance, give his films an intellectual height that connects with European sensibility. In 1957 he recovers his name for the credits in Merciless Time , a reflection on the death penalty with a luxury British cast, which includes Michael Redgrave and Ann Todd. The Key to the Riddle (1959), with Hardy Krüger, allows him to recover a detective story in the style of those he had filmed in the United States, yes, very personal, and against the backdrop of the artistic world. The same comment can be made about El criminal (1960), prison cinema.

Eva (1962) marks a change of course in the treatment of complex human relationships, which is confirmed in The Servant (1963), the film that cemented his international prestige, and with which he began his professional collaboration with Dirk Bogarde and with him later. winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature and playwright Harold Pinter , in the role of screenwriter. The filmmaker masterfully paints the relationship between a servant and his lord, a study of class relations where the roles are reversed, and this within a very cinematographic dynamic. The following year he repeated with Bogarde in Rey y patria , an anti-war film that questions what love for one’s own country should be understood as, a subject that is close to his heart.

It is curious to see that Losey’s filmography includes films as forgettable as Modesty Blaise, superagente femenina (1966), but to make sure there is no doubt that it is a food diversion, the following year he signs Accident , with Bogard and Pinter, a complex film about the Memories that sprout in a teacher before the death in a car accident of a former student, who was traveling with his fiancée. With Hollywood stars ( Elizabeth Taylor , Richard Burton , Robert Mitchum , Mia Farrow ), but again displaying complex human types, he directed the harsh 1968 The Damned Woman and The Secret Ceremony .

The 70s begin and it gives an idea of ​​the versatility of Losey that is behind Manhunt (1970), a film that fits the tradition of relentless persecution, or The assassination of Trotsky (1972), which investigates the historical events of which it was protagonist the Spanish Ramón Mercader. But the title that in my opinion gives the right measure of his talent is undoubtedly The Messenger (1971), Palme d’Or at Cannes, a poetically heartbreaking painting of the end of the innocence of its young protagonist, with a deliciously irresistible aestheticism. Pinter’s screenplay, adapted from LP Harltley’s novel, is magnificent, and the cast, music and cinematography stand out thanks to Losey’s entomological precision.

Jane Fonda works under orders in Blackmailing a Wife (1973), an adaptation by Ibsen, and following her taste for collaborating with playwrights, she makes A Romantic Englishwoman (1975) with a script by Tom Stoppard . Again portraying deranged identities, she shines in The Other Mr. Klein (1976), a moral fable about a scoundrel who takes advantage of anti-Semitic laws in occupied France under the Vichy regime, until he himself becomes racially suspect. Of her subsequent filmography, which ends in 1985, the most notable is Don Giovanni (1979), a beautiful film version of Mozart’s opera.